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I wanted to show you guys my very first fanart I'm posting! (this is a really old image, been meaning to post this for a while now actually) Jeb accidentally fainted from excitement while trying to land on the Mun, faceplanting right into the Staging button...

Oh man, am I going to have fun! I've got the game installed and played it for a few hours, but most of my rockets (like a space shuttle that didnt work) blew up! (epic explosions, good job!) Now I'm starting new. Currently finishing off my Mun rocket. Heres how it looks so far. Mission will be posted within a few minutes or so.

Hi all, I just launched a 470-ton beast with 231 parts in order to get 30 tons of landers and probes to high munar orbit (hopefully with a bit of fuel left over, I don't have -any- mods that would tell me how much delta-V I have). This is an all-stock ship; I know people -love- to brag about their modded designs but all-stock ships would be most helpful to me as a campaign-mode kind of player. I just about have nuclear engines unlocked, but I can either unlock those -or- the mk2 and mk3 aircraft pieces, but not both at the moment (something this mission should help with, actually). Am wondering if anyone has a really efficient and minimalist design for this? I could definitely see myself building interplanetary ships in munar orbit, but in career mode 200k per launch hurts I actually haven't finished this run yet so I don't actually know if this ship is too much or too little. It's got (3x2("Kickback" SRB) + (3xLV-T30 "Reliants) + 3xMk-55 "Thud" + 1 mainsail) in the bottom stage, plus one "Poodle" in the middle stage and actually a FL-T800 + LV-909 "Terrier" hidden away under the (2.5 ton) fairing just in case. Depending on how much fuel I have left over, I'm going to dump fuel into Mun Command in high orbit, and hopefully de-orbit and land the entire payload en masse with the terrier. If I don't have that much fuel left, each of the landers actually has as part of the payload its very own FL-T400 and twin "Twitch" engines that I am hoping to use to rotate the duty roster on my grounded base. Lots of untried designs, I'm sure there'll be a failure cascade somewhere in the mission. Which is why I'm asking what other people are using, so I can compare xD Edit: The bottom stage got me into LKO just fine, even though I don't like starting turnover until the kickbacks are done and gone (at 20km or so) and spent a good 200 delta-V making my orbit pretty. I still have 400 units of fuel in the tank (out of 5600) to contribute to my lunar burn; if I'd thought to put a command module on this stage I could de-orbit it with that and probably recover a chunk of my 200,000 credit investment. Next time, maybe. Instead that fuel is going towards trans-Munar burn. Edit 2: It turns out the second stage is a little over-engineered; I completed my Munar burn with almost 2/3 of the tank left! So in its present configuration it's definitely a candidate for some sort of interplanetary expedition. The rest of that fuel is going into the orbital storage in Mun Command. Edit 3: Got 1280 fuel units into the storage at Mun Command. Used most of my onboard monoprop to dock, but Mun Command has all sorts of surplus to refuel it. I only had 75 units of default rover tankage for monoprop anyhow -- just enough! The extra 150 parts made a pretty big impact on the lag for my simple back-country command outpost. The real payload for this mission is 3 scientists who were undergoing astronaut training at Mun Command, as well as two tourists who are along for the ride. The scientists will each plant a flag, hopefully each in a separate Munar biome, collect a bunch of data, then return to Kerbal with their intel and plant another flag. Then they're to be deployed each to a separate science facility. For RP purposes I'll probably shuffle out Maree and Grajorie when their replacements' training is complete, as well as the guy on the munar Far East Crater base. That'll also let them flag on Minmus and return home to level up.That'll give me six level 2 or 3 scientists and enough data to really Science! Edit4: Hah, forgot solar panels on my probes and landers. And it turns out the landers have enough gas for a suicide burn landing, and then just barely to get into orbit again, but not back home. So they'll need to dock with something and refuel for the homeward leg.