What Is Your Biggest Accomplishment in KSP thus far?

[TheOfficialStorm]

Kerbal Space Program is currently 3.9 years old with a birthday coming up on the 24th of this month! Regardless if you have just purchased the game or have had it for the last 3.9 years, in your opinion, what is your greatest accomplishment thus far? Whether your greatest accomplishment is recreating a 1:1 scale deathstar(RIP PC), or just landing on the mun, I want to hear it! If you have screenshots be sure to include them, i'd love to seem them!

[Overland]

Trains.. trains and more trains.. but not just cobbled together... refined. undergone multiple generations of advancements.. over 1 year and a half of driving.. loss.. gains.. death.. alot of death.. going from xbox 360 pad to a dedicated joystick.. then finally currently using a full steering wheel and throttle..

ive done things in KSP that I always wanted to do in other simulators.. bringing me a kind of attachment and accomplishment ive never quite felt before in other dedicated simulators..

im currently undertaking the elcano challenge.. ground circumnavigation on kerbin with the product of that said year and a halfs experience..

This video is of former 4408.. sadly she was lost in a system crash.. her sister train 4408 Mk2 resumes her journey.. still its one of the best examples of a perfect moment ive experenced in KSP

the locomotive was functioning normally.. generating power to the wheels with the engines.. settled down to mid throttle.. we were traversing a bit of flat landscape for the next 20km or so before the start of the mountains heading for KSC...

the sense of ... scale.. dawned on me and I was able to capture it in a video..

a very proud.. very.... deep.. moment

KSP as a whole really does make other games with maybe the exception of Garry's Mod seem.... boxed in and very limited

also gliders. the new aero is wonderful for electric powered gliders with big wing spans.. brings back the feeling of the original flight unlimited series with the grob glider

squad created such a beautiful monster that im proud to be a part of since 0.20

(appologies, I was editing while you posted the reply.. forgot to add the video)

Edited June 5, 2015 by Overland

[TheOfficialStorm]

Trains.. trains and more trains.. but not just cobbled together... refined. undergone multiple generations of advancements.. over 1 year and a half of driving.. loss.. gains.. death.. alot of death.. going from xbox 360 pad to a dedicated joystick.. then finally currently using a full steering wheel and throttle..

ive done things in KSP that I always wanted to do in other simulators.. bringing me a kind of attachment and accomplishment ive never quite felt before in other dedicated simulators..

KSP as a whole really does make other games with maybe the exception of Garry's Mod seem.... boxed in and very limited

also gliders. the new aero is wonderful for electric powered gliders with big wing spans.. brings back the feeling of the original flight unlimited series with the grob glider

squad created such a beautiful monster that im proud to be a part of since 0.20

I'm dying to get a dedicated joystick for this game! I can't imagine how amazing it would be to play in IVA with a joystick, would be so much more immersive! The gliders are tons of fun to experiment with the new aerodynamic system.

[A35K]

I finally made an Eve return lander in my 0.23 save, it can get a 2 man capsule to orbit from 2000m above sea level.

[Feradose]

Its docking (klawing) in an escape velocity out of kerbin and saving the kerbal that got slingshotted out by mun, my first unequatorial docking that isnt on an 100x100 orbit

[Crazy_Redd]

My first was, offcourse, landing on the Mün. But my biggest acomplishment so far is a manned landing on Duna. Since I'm from 1.0 so not much more

[soulsource]

For me: The stock 0.23.5 Eve return mission, that would, in principle have been able to launch from sea level. It was a 3 kiloton monster of a ship, far from optimal, and it lost several tanks and engines upon landing (who needs landing legs if you have perfectly fine engines?!?), but still made it back to orbit.

It was a multi-ship mission, including a crew vehicle that brought Kerbals to Eve orbit and back, the "lander", and a rover that doubled as a short range boat, in order to get science readings from both, land and sea. The mission furthermore included several refueling missions in low and high Kerbin orbit, and in low Eve orbit as well.

I did use quicksaves on that mission though, and landing took several reloads...

[Unfawkable]

Safely landing a needlessly oversized lander which was spinning out of control on a 5000m mountain top on Duna. Best piloting moment ever.

[heng]

building a 4 (+3 fuel up) launches Jool mothership in orbit, with landers and mini probes and 3 kerbals, and getting it to Jool.

aaand underestimating the fuel requirements... they never came back.

[r4pt0r]

I've done some manned jool moon returns, but as far as im concerned my biggest accomplishment would have been my mission to get a satellites in orbit of Jool itself, Bop, Pol, Tylo, Val, and Laythe in one launch. everything went perfect and it just was a great mission.

That mission funded the rest of my .90 campaign just by transmitting temperatures from all those bodies haha

[Scarecrow88]

Achievement wise, I think landing on Mun, and mastering docking. With those two skills, you can go anywhere in the Kerbal system.

From a piloting perspective, it was a rescue mission. I had Jeb on a fairly straight forward Mun flight, but shortly after leaving Kerbin SOI the Kraken intervened and destroyed his ship. All that was left was the capsule, with absolutely no means of propulsion, and he was on collision course with the Mun. I had to design and build a rescue ship, launch it and work out an intercept course to catch up with him before he met his fate. That was pretty thrilling.

Edited June 5, 2015 by Scarecrow88

[Mr. Speed]

I may have gone to the planets, my most memorable achievements were done in low Kerbin orbit.

A long time ago I was testing a new SSTO spaceplane and ran out of juice quite close to my docking target, so I had to EVA the captain and dock it by pushing it with the EVA thrusters. It was quite a heavy vehicle and it was pretty hard to judge the directions without navball.

The hardest thing I have done (quite recently) was dock with a jet inside the atmosphere on a suborbital trajectory and push it to orbit. I jumped up a jet only plane out of the atmosphere so it had a suborbital trajectory with a few minutes in space. I had a capsule waiting in orbit to rendezvous and dock with it, only problem was I forgot the docking port on the plane so I had to guess the center of mass and push it. When I intercepted the plane we were just about to fall into the atmosphere so I didn't have much time. It was really hard to find the right spot to push the craft so I lost more altitude than I had hoped. Once I found the right spot we were around 55km and I was sweating like a teenager talking to a girl with my heart racing in my chest. I gently built up the thrust to 100 so I wouldn't lose the spot and managed to push it out of the atmosphere to a 200+ apoapsis(there was no time to check the map view). Now the hard part was over and just had to push the periapsis out of the atmoshere, a much easier job as there was plenty of time.

I did it because I wanted to make a challenge out of it, but I was too lazy to post it, and 1.0 makes it harder for jets to jump out of the atmosphere, although it could still be done with a rapier jet of course.

[Enkiel]

landing on duna... it was a one way trip, but at least now i know i can do it.

[timsfitz]

Landing and returning a Jeb from Eve in .23.5. Took a lot of preparation and 2 previous failed attempts but it was awesome.

[CreatureX]

Five 1 star Kerbals landed on Duna with a return trajectory VERY close to the Sun. They came back at 4 stars. What makes this feat an accomplishment? I ran out of dv getting into orbit of Duna (thanks for interrupt Ike) so the lander did ALL the work AND made it back to Kerbin with enough dv to allow the Kerbonauts to survive landing withut a chute. I seem to over-engineer everything BUT my rockets.

That trip aged my space program more than I would have liked.

I've only been playing since 1.0 hit and this happened yesterday. Best sick day evar!

[justidutch]

Landing on and returning from Mün will always have a place in my heart. It's like your first kiss with a super-hot girl.

A few weeks ago though, I had another huge thrill, a deep-space rendezvous with a broken ship, to replace a command module that had broken off due to my own bad placement of a service bay. I have copied the thread I made about it below...

I have a story to tell, but it's long. So here's the point form, and you can check out the spoilers for the details if you have nothing better to do:

1) Accept contracts for Ike exploration, satellite around Duna and science around Kerbol

2) Build and launch ship

3) Ship breaks in deep space

4) Send mission to rendezvous

5) Game starts glitching

In my new career (hard settings but with revert + quicksaves) I got the Explore Ike contract, and at the same time a contract to set up a probe around Duna. A third contract was there to collect science around the sun. Perfect, I can kill three birds with one rocket, and make about a million kerbitsBucksUnits doing it. I spent a lot of time designing and testing the vessel, deciding it should be a science base. I don't have any docking ports unlocked yet, so it wouldn't be feasible, or at least easy, to do a return mission. But why not make it a permanent base, I haven't tried out the new daily remote science thingy. And then it would beg for another mission to go get the dudes at a later date; always fun.

So I built this ship. Just before I launched it, I said to myself: "self, why not slap on some tanks and engines onto the top part where the lander can and sciency bits are and make it detachable, so it can hop around Ike and gather science, returning it to the lab?". A good last minute addition. And on top of that is the probe that will handle the Duna contract. Three ships in one, good to go.

I got to orbit with a fantastic gravity turn (perhaps my best ever - you can really save a lot of delta-V!), plotted a gravity slingshot around the moon (Ike was not lined up for a good transition but I didn't want to wait), and found myself in deep space with an inclination matching Duna (after a very small adjustment), and pushed my apoapsis to intersect Duna's orbit. All good, I may have to wait a full orbit to get to a point where I can plot an intercept, but Kerbals would rather wait in space for that kind of thing than on the ground. But while I'm waiting, why not fulfill that contract to collect science around Kerbol. So, I open container that holds the little sciency bits on the hopper, and notice that it clips through the tanks I added last minute. It shakes and shudders, but holds together. Darn it, I hate that. That's what you get for last minute additions; that is management doing something without consulting the engineering section, bypassing quality control. But I perform the experiments and send out Bob to collect the data and reset the instruments. All good.

So, I says to myself I says "self, why not see what other missions I can get going while I wait to set up the Duna encounter?" Quicksave. Back to mission control I go, to administration, the tracking station, etc. But after further contemplation, "nah, one mission at a time is enough for me. Although rockets here are built in a day, Rome wasn't, so…" Enter tracking station, focus on Ike mission, fly vessel. Ka-BLAM!!! What the? Crap, I guess the clipped container blew things apart! Maybe if I reload the quicksave; hold F9… Ka-BLAM!!! Megacrap. Rage, rage, rage-quit against the dying of the mission… no. No I will not rage-quit. Ok, what can I salvage? The main ship is mostly intact, including the main engines, gas tanks, science module and habitat. But the lander-can with batteries and experiments have disassembled, and are slowly floating away. Jeb, exit the lander-can and make your way back to the ship - good thing there's two free bunks in the habitat! Oh look, the Duna probe is still intact, in one piece and totally functional! It'll be able to rendezvous with Duna but I have no idea if it has the delta-V to slow down into orbit. Probably, but I'm too lazy to break out the calculator right now. I'll just see when the time comes. But what to do about the Ike mission???

Now, once before in my KSP history have I attempted to intercept with another ship in deep space. Couldn't do it, impossible. Like, needle on another planet's haystack sort of impossible. But I found a willing rookie one-star pilot willing to sacrifice her life. Or at least her free time. So, with the remaining science I had saved up (I don't always spend it in one place) I researched the Claw. Built a simple ship: lots of gas, and a section that will detach with a new lander can and sciency bits. Launch. Get to orbit, plan trajectory and full-throttle. Upon leaving Kerbin's SOI, I plan and execute a trajectory that gets me to within 12,000 km but at about a 30* angle of the Ike mission ship. But we're learning stuff here, lets try it. About halfway through the plotted course I make some little adjustments along the 6 axises. Intercept is now ~9,000 km away. And so on and so forth. I would stop time-warping every time I reached halfway through the remaining course, stop the time-warp, and rotate to prograde and see if going forward or backward would get the intercept any closer, and do the same with normal-antinormal and the other axis (the light blue one) as well. And wouldn't you know it, by the time the intercept was a few days away, I got it to within 5 kilometres! The relative velocity was still rather extreme, like 2,200 m/s, but I had just enough delta-V to pull that off.

I haven't felt this proud of a KSP accomplishment since the very early days, perhaps my first Mun landing. Crazy stuff! The Claw docking went without a hitch, I placed it right at the front of the Ike mission vessel, basically replacing the same bits that blew off.

So, my mission can resume, after almost an entire Kerbal year passed waiting for the rescue ship. The mission is now two ships: the fixed-up original and the spontaneously separated probe. But all is not well, at least from the gameplay perspective. The story part is fine, things are progressing nicely. I have managed to get both the ship and the probe almost into stable Duna orbits. Doing this, however, has been very frustrating as switching from the one vessel to the other is causing my game to glitch. If I adjust the course of one vessel and time-warp, this vessel stays stationary in the map while the other proceeds normally. I have to quit the game and reload, then it works for a bit, then starts to glitch again. It's very strange and makes me want to give up. I won't, but I'll probably wait a few days to simmer down.

I have to get the probe into the correct orbit in respect to the contract's specifications, then I have to land the Ike mission on the ground. But the way the game is handling this it will take me hours and hours of setting a course, executing it, exiting the game and restarting. I will submit a bug report if this keeps happening.

[Whirligig Girl]

I might think it is my Tylo landing perhaps? It was a failure that required several rescue missions, but it was still pretty cool. I have a lot of cool stuff that I've done, but there is still one major goal left: Eve return. (And also Moho return, which is a smaller goal, and Dres return, but who cares about Dres)

[CaptainApollo]

Being a newbie, my biggest accomplishment is getting to orbit, but soon it will be getting and landing on the Mun!

[Stratzenblitz75]

My biggest achievement that I finished would have to be my Kerbol System grand tour. As you can see, this was done in 0.23.5. I'd imagine a Kerbol System grand tour would be a lot more difficult in 1.0 due to the ISP nerfs and aero changes, but still possible.

As for unfinished projects, I have my Atlas mission (see my sig) which I probably put far more time into (100-200 hours). Unfortunately, because of how outdated my save-file is, bugs and crashes happen all the time (in fact, most of time is spent fixing bugs) which makes the save-file almost unplayable. With 1.0 out though, I hope I can breathe new life into the series with a reboot. When I finish this series, it will easily be my biggest achievement.

Oh and there's also my first Mun landing. I will never forget staying up late to land this thing on the Mun.

[LN400]

I haven't been able to play so much I got to other planets other than orbiting around one of Duna's moons with a probe but I would say my greatest accomplishment was to get my very first ship into Kerbin orbit. Greatest as in the one moment that gave me the greatest rush. I've been to Mun and Minmus several times but still yeah, the first Kerbin orbit is the one event that gave me the greatest rush. A lot like my first nervous hover with an rc helicopter. I've come some way since then but those firsts are what sticks.

Technically, one of my Saturn V-ish trips to Mun where I was able to pinpoint my landing site from orbit and do a stock IVA landing but again, those firsts are hard to beat.

[Captain Sierra]

The colonization of Laythe. I finally succeeded in establishing a base & Vall refuelling operation. Jool racked up almost 20 confirmed kills and I lost count how many vessel destructions across my previous missions, but I have finally conquered the behemoth.

[TrooperCooper]

Aside from visiting places, it probably was creating a nice MKS mining colony on the mun:

For some screens of the construction process, follow these links:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/29533-What-did-you-do-in-KSP-today?p=1678333#post1678333

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/29533-What-did-you-do-in-KSP-today?p=1689163#post1689163

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/29533-What-did-you-do-in-KSP-today?p=1691238#post1691238

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/29533-What-did-you-do-in-KSP-today?p=1696490#post1696490

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/29533-What-did-you-do-in-KSP-today?p=1700702#post1700702

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/29533-What-did-you-do-in-KSP-today?p=1724574#post1724574

[bigyihsuan]

Getting to Jool.

Because I don't have much free time nowadays, most of my missions are very short, so the longer sessions are larger accomplishments for me.

[Frank_G]

Orbital construction of the Arthur C. Kerman back in .23 for a grand tour mission to Jool.

And landing a complete Duna base in only one landing...

And my return from Eve...

Detailed report can be found in my signature.

Oh... and Laythe Colony...

Edited June 5, 2015 by Frank_G

[espenrik]

Safely accomplished return flights to all planets and moons, back in .21 or was it .22.

Apollo style with 3 crew, where two landed and one remained in the command module.