What has been your most satisfying mission in 1.0 so far?

[r4pt0r]

Just completed one of my most fun missions. The entertainment for me came from the constraints career puts on you. Im am still in the early stages of my career, still have not unlocked maneuver nodes, just completed a manned Mun flyby, and the next step for me was an unmanned lander.

Enter the MunShot II:

The unmanned sister to the MunKerb series

This was my first Mun landing in 1.0, after really not playing much in the months leading up to the update. I got ambitious and targeted the Munar canyon.

What was most exciting was using no SAS(stupid stayputnik), no maneuver nodes, and manually flying it, quite deliberately, into the Munar canyon all on my own. Using what I'd learned before to alter my inclination to line up a canyon pass, and settling it down right on the canyon floor.

What has been most satisfying for you?

[EricT43]

I'm a n00b playing Normal career mode. I just got the game at 1.0 release, and love it. Gaming and cool science all in one package!

Last night I flew Jeb and a scientist (inline cockpit) to a low Munar orbit and back and earned enough science to unlock solar panels and the SAS-enabled remote control thingy. Felt good. Launched a probe into solar orbit just to celebrate. Unmanned Mun landing is next up for me too! I will shamelessly copy your design.

[spinomonkey]

The night was inky black and the smell of liquid fuel was fresh in the air...

Ok, so I had a mobile lab orbiting Kerbin with two Kerbalnauts that needed to be rescued. So I mounted a rescue mission with a 3 person command pod- plenty of room to save the day, right? Well, upon reaching the mobile lab I look over and what do I see- Jeb and Bob sitting in the rescue command pod. This presents a bit of a problem, as I suddenly realized I won't have enough room for everyone in the rescue pod. Luckily, I built the rescue craft with a Klaw. So I reached out and snatched the mobile lab and engaged a retroburn into the atmosphere. If I couldn't rescue everyone aboard the rescue vessel- then EVERYONE was going down together. Through some serious stroke of luck, this oddly shaped craft fought off the forces of re-entry and parachuted to safety in Kerbin's waters.

Pretty much the definition of a Kerbal experience and quick thinking.

[Securus]

Got a mission to fire off that really big reusable SRB, IN ORBIT! while I still haven't even unlocked the larger rocket motors. Took me about an 1.5 hours to finally get it up there and I had to use it's own power to establish the orbit. With some quick adding of a new stage, I staged into and got MAD PROFITS!

[Thomas988]

I currently have a probe out to the Mun to scan for resources. My fingers are crossed that my already-landed Mun base is located on a good ore patch. It's not too special, but getting back into KSP is fun.

[Red Iron Crown]

My favorite so far has been an asteroid capture using fuel harvested from the asteroid itself. I didn't bother much with asteroids before, they're more interesting now that they have real value.

[regex]

Getting this thing to orbit under heating settings that were fairly hot for a pod. I've flown it quite a lot lately, very fun LKO crew shuttle.

Edited May 5, 2015 by regex

[EtherDragon]

So far (I'm going kinda slow, at a pace that supports my capability to record and edit shows for my channel) my most satisfying mission was when Valentina nailed an air-breathing landing on the side of a mountain to complete a Survey Contract. (Jeb tried, but couldn't pull it off and crashed, but survived!)

Velentina being the smart cookie, she is, decided to fly low over the zone and pull the emergency chute. Settling gently down, got the contract finished and flew right off that mountain like a boss.

[HoloYolo]

Err, my Apollo 1.0 mission. I accidentally over-heated the service module engine, and had to use the lander. Made it home with 10 m/s of delta-v left.

[hipnox]

A SSTO that managed to dock on my 130km/130km Space Station.

Currently deciding which Kerbal gets to try a reentry.

Edited May 5, 2015 by hipnox

[Soda Popinski]

After successfully landing Valentina on the Mun, and realizing I didn't have enough fuel to get her to orbit and rendezvous with the 3 person command pod (CM), I launched a 2 person lander with Jeb to bring her back up to the 3 person command pod.

Unfortunately, I realized, I already had 2 kerbals in the CM, as I used the opportunity to do a Munar orbital rescue, and already sent it back to Kerbin anyway. So now, I've stranded both Jeb and Valentina on the Mun.

I then launched a rescue mission to rescue the first rescue mission. I had a contract to test the Twin Boar in Munar orbit, so I used the science Valentina beamed back to research enough to set up my first asparagus build in 1.0 career, and sent the whole kit and kaboodle to Munar orbit with a 3 kerbin pod. I rendezvoused with Val and Jeb, had Jeb aim the LM retrograde and initiate a slow burn and hop out to deorbit the LM, then board the rescue rocket.

Next, I prepared to jettison the Twin Boar and head back on Poodle power, when I realized in my haste, I didn't put a decoupler below the Poodle (all the Poodle's fuel was gone, and I don't have fuel transfer yet). And I realized, I left 6 science data in the LM now on a suborbital crash course.

I adjusted the ungainly rescue rocket (3 command pod, useless Poodle, Twin Boar and 3 fuel tanks) so it would cross paths with the suborbital LM, and upon rendezvous matched the suborbital course. Jeb went out to collect the data he forgot, and returned it to the rescue rocket. We happened to be on the correct side of the Mun to initiate Munar escape back to Kerbin's SOI, so we did, and made it back.

TLDR Don't plan these things out when you're half asleep. 3 rockets for 1 mission. Everyone made it home.

Edited May 5, 2015 by Soda Popinski

[GluttonyReaper]

I really enjoyed doing an aerial survey contract, which is surprising considering I've never really used planes at all in the past for anything. It was fun running into the issue that I only had basic jet engines, and needing to be over 19000m ... I really wasn't expecting a jet/rocket hybrid plane to work as well and as satisfying as it did. That, and there's something immensely satisfying about getting a plane with rectangle wings and fixed landing gear up to supersonic speeds.

[Caelib]

I used the new 1.25m Xenon gas tank to do a full orbital exploration of Jool and all of its moons with a single craft. I took the new clamshell scanner and finished up with a polar orbit of Laythe for future colonization. I must say that getting into polar orbit took quite a bit of time, battery power and delta-V.

When I first designed this mission, I thought 5000+ Xenon gas would be overkill ... it was barely enough!

Edited May 5, 2015 by Caelib

[-RanZ-]

I haven't had much play time but I did get a resource scanning sat to Laythe to prep for a base. Boy, there is not much for ore on Laythe!

[Hyomoto]

So far my most -interesting- mission was sending Jeb to the Mun to perform a series of visual and temperature investigations around the Mun. I took on about four contracts for these, and over the course of about eight days he had completed twelve observations. Unfortunately due to a bad calculation there wasn't enough fuel to return to Kerbin so I had him land and complete two addition contracts, reporting science from the Mun and placing a flag. Unfortunately I forgot that the Mun is tidally locked to Kerbin, and I landed without a line of sight back to Kerbin so he wasn't able to make the transmission.

The solution? Build a one time rocket to blast up about 250km above Kerbin to serve as a relay point to send that science back. Thanks to his efforts I was able to upgrade the VAB and the tracking station. A mission is currently underway to go and retrieve him.

[Teutooni]

The night was inky black and the smell of liquid fuel was fresh in the air...

Ok, so I had a mobile lab orbiting Kerbin with two Kerbalnauts that needed to be rescued. So I mounted a rescue mission with a 3 person command pod- plenty of room to save the day, right? Well, upon reaching the mobile lab I look over and what do I see- Jeb and Bob sitting in the rescue command pod. This presents a bit of a problem, as I suddenly realized I won't have enough room for everyone in the rescue pod. Luckily, I built the rescue craft with a Klaw. So I reached out and snatched the mobile lab and engaged a retroburn into the atmosphere. If I couldn't rescue everyone aboard the rescue vessel- then EVERYONE was going down together. Through some serious stroke of luck, this oddly shaped craft fought off the forces of re-entry and parachuted to safety in Kerbin's waters.

Pretty much the definition of a Kerbal experience and quick thinking.

Halfway through reading this I was all giddy thinking you snatched one of the kerbals with the Klaw (not the lab) and deorbited with him hanging for dear life outside the safety of a heat shielded pod. Was slightly disappointed but t'was still awesome.

Mine was Valentina managing to recover a mission with a really poor lander which was all aerodynamic and tall but fell over on ~7 degree inclined slope upon landing. She used the service bay doors to bump the vessel up while speeding 20m/s along the surface.

Edited May 5, 2015 by Teutooni

[Mister Dilsby]

Landed a crew on the Mun aiming for the NW crater. Realized that we had just missed it and had actually landed in the Highlands, south of the crater. Further realized that we were quite near the reputed location of [REDACTED]. Made a little suborbital hop and sighted the [REDACTED] in flight, made a close landing and paid our respects.

[Bluntie]

Just a bit of back and forth between Kerbin and Minmus. Nothing special in itself, but the last trip last night felt like I finally "got" it. I feel confident I could pretty much do whatever I set my mind to now, given enough testing.

[Moonfrog]

For me it was the Mun Landing, i launched two vessals at the same time, with bob and jeb, and valentina and alisha in the other. Had to aerobreak for a long time to renter the atmosphere due to low fuel. Learnt that i can slow myself down by tilting the rocket upwards to the sky, drag effect really works better now. Lost parachutes on 3 attempts but got there in 4. Learnt a few things, got over 800 science, new parts. It was a good step forward. Felt i achieved something.

[Caelib]

I haven't had much play time but I did get a resource scanning sat to Laythe to prep for a base. Boy, there is not much for ore on Laythe!

Yeah, I was surprised to see this too. It looks like the highest concentration is on the north pole, but that isn't very practical a location to reach for crewed missions!

[itstimaifool]

Enter the MunShot II:

Woah. I named my first few Munar missions Munshot also!

My most satisfying mission has been getting my Hephaestus-II station into orbit.

The solar arrays were launched in a separate launch (both sets of panels in the same launch).

You might say that the amount of solar panels and batteries that I have is overkill, and to that I say, you're absolutely right! But my Hephaestus-I station kept running out of power, and I didn't want to risk that problem. Especially since I'll eventually have an ore-processing module on this station.

And in case you didn't know, Hephaestus was the Greek god of metalworking and fire. I'm sure if the Greeks had a god of rocketry, it would be Hephaestus.

Edited May 5, 2015 by itstimaifool

[WhirlwindMonk]

I was trying to get a science lab set up around Minimus with a lander to go down and collect more science as needed. Everything went great until I was taking off with a lander full of science that I realized I hadn't put any RCS on either the lander or the lab. That was a bit annoying, but I figured I could just EVA the science over instead of docking. That was when I discovered my second mistake. In an effort to save weight and money, my 1.25m lander and 2.5m station connected at the end of a Rockmax Adapter, rather than the larger command pod, meaning the station could do nothing unless I docked the lander. After 15-20 very tense minutes, I managed to dock two crafts in minimus orbit, one being completely uncontrollable, the other having 3 LV-909s as its sole method of propulsion. Oh, and the docking port was pointing in the same direction as the engines.

I have since put another station in orbit, this one with a command pod and both halves with RCS, but that first one, despite (and because of) its flaws, is definitely my most satisfying accomplishment in 1.0, and possibly the most satisfying thing I've ever done in KSP (with over 200 hours played).

[vicwarrior]

I ve had KSP for a long time, but just about 74 hours on it according to steam. I remember the first time i landed on minimus and the mun the satisfaction was real! However i never actually got anything into the SOI of any other planet (however i think that is bound to change soon).

Ive started back again at KSP when 1.0 rolled around and so far 2 missions stand out first, a rescue missions, after landing on the Mun valentina managed escape it and get into a kerbin orbit, began burning to lower the periapsis and go back home.... a puff of smoke comes out of the engine, no fuel left, an enormous bounty of science...... oh, and valentina stranded in space.

I had never managed a rendezvous, or managed to dock anything before, usually for me if you ran out of fuel you were as good as dead. I decided to do try to do something i never did before, a rescue mission, i needed valentina to bring back home her science.

The rescue was hard, i sent a probe with an empty cockpit, i thought my rescue probe was, as the rest of my crafts, overengenired, i was yet again underestimating my craft and overstimating my skills. I managed to set up a rendezvous, the orbit of both ships weren't the same but i went ahead and did it, switched to valentina, took the science, waited for the time to be right and took the jump.

Valentina was in an EVA jump for well over 10 minutes before she got into the rescue probe.

Looked at the fuel gauge, i thought i would have to send another rescue probe, anyways decided to try to lower my orbit as much as possible with whatever fuel i has left.

Much to my surprise i had the shallowest of reentries when i ran out of fuel, but that was all that i needed, the science made it back to kerbin safely.

The other thing was landing a massive outpost. I was just going trought contracts and took one to build an outpost on minimus that paid big bucks, i though it would be like the rest, needing space for 5 kerbals and some random parts. However this one was diferent, and i didn't notice until it was too late (i am too stubborn to not complete a contract once ive taken it), it wanted space for 12 kerbals and a mobile lab.

You could guess from my previously mentioned mission that i won't be bothering to assemble anything so it had to be in a single launch.

Also with my experience with landers i didn't to make it into a goddamn skyscraper so i ended up sticking a bunch of mk1 cans around the lab instead of stacking hitchikers containers on top of it.

The final lander was stupidly ugly and huge, it had also needed a launcher according to its size which ended up with a hefty price tag.

It felt amazing when it finally touched down and never fell over or had a fatal loss of control over it.

[nadreck]

I am only about 10 hours (my time, 20 days kerbal clock) into my first V1.0.x career (luckily have been able to move it to each of the successive release) on my hard mode: standard hard except 50% each funds, rep, science, but only 100% penalties.

So in my first non vanilla rescue contract I simply took one of the Mk 1 capsules off my two capsule tourist contract craft that had my recently unlocked OKTO. Given that I had a fair bit of fuel left on it's last flight, I figured that taking off the extra Mk 1 pod would give me all the extra ÃŽâ€V I needed to make it to a 2,000,000 orbit and back after rendezvous and rescue. I managed to launch near the ascending node and get into an orbit that was only 8° off from the derelict, found a course that would take me out to it with the descending node coming up just before a close approach, created a maneuver node about half way out to tweak the rendezvous to about 2.5km then when I got there killed relative velocities while closing in on the target "pushing" the relative velocity vector closer to the anti-target indicator. My rescue Kerbal managed the space walk easily, gets on board, and I know it is going to be tight with about 20 units of fuel and orbital velocity just over 600m/s. So I decide to optimize and wait for the AP and then brake with the remaining fuel only to see the fuel run out with my PE at 91,000. So my rescue Kerbal jumps out of the ship maneuvers to just behind the engine, impacts it ever so gently then pushes with his reaction jets for exactly one unit of fuels worth, checks the orbit and orientation, PE down to 82,000, orientation just outside the retrograde bubble, so after centering in the bubble he approaches and pushes again down to 1.0 units in the back pack and the PE is now mid 50's so back in the craft to refill the jet pack, out and push until the PE is 32,000 and then rider her down to a safe landing in one of the oceans.

[Captain Vlad]

My first rescue contract came up almost immediately after I'd made my first successful orbit, and, since at that stage of career mode, $54,000 is a lot of money, I accepted it, but then built a two-man rocket with some pretty basic parts, though fortunately I had my workhorse 909 already...don't think the mission would've been possible without it.

After some reverted test launches (my version of computer models. Could use sandbox mode, but too lazy) I get the rescue ship orbit ready and send her skyward with Jeb at the controls (Val got the first orbit, so I gave Jeb the first orbital rescue). Rocket, somehow, proves a little shakier than it did in the tests (probably pilot error...) but makes it to orbit with what I figure is plenty of fuel.

What I don't have plenty of is battery power for the reaction wheel.

So, over the course of the next eight game time hours I make adjustment burns, first to let the stranded Kerbal's pod catch up to Jeb, then to meet up. Doing this requires me to steer prograde or retrograde with SAS on for a few seconds, to save electricity. Despite the lack of constant fine control, I end up within .3 kilometers of our Kerbonaut from the lesser agency and she spacewalks over and hops into Jeb's craft, probably wondering why all the lights were turned out and a note not to plug any electrical devices in was on the control panel.

And then it's time to re-enter, with precious little battery power. I point retrograde, burn, again using brief spurts of SAS, hoping to save enough I can just leave it on through the big flaming slow-down. Down we go, don't have any trouble holding the craft stable until fire starts to burn away the heat shield but as the capsule starts to rock, I turn SAS on. It lasts longer than I'd feared but shorter than I'd hoped, and the ship is still trailing fire when it starts to tumble end over end.

She holds together, though, but a new problem arises when I realize that she's going waaaaay faster than I expected her to be at that point. Plummeting in over some mountains, I pop the chutes after the flames die down and the partially deployed silk slows me up, but...nowhere near enough. They deploy, finally, but I'm not fully slowed fast enough and the rescue ship hits the ground harder than is safe, destroying the heat shield. It sort of bounces when it hits, though, and when it hits the ground again, it stays together.

Jeb and the KSP's newest recruit get out of the pod and await the arrival of the recovery team and probably clean spacesuits.

Started re-setting my chutes to open much much higher after this mission. Thing is, I've done things on KSP that were probably more difficult, but I think that may have been my most harrowing mission since I got the game, due to the low tech level, small budget and the new re-entry danger.