What Is the Greatest moment you have ever had?

[Majorjim!]

By far, landing on Mun in the old demo.

[Guest]

Rescuing this landing, probably the best thing I ever did.

 

[Randazzo]

Not in KSP, but related to it: After spending a week trying to get Zzz's panels working properly in game as radiators (with next to zero knowledge at the time), finally getting that animation to export from Blender in Unity properly AND work in-game was amazing. I actually threw my arms up and almost broke into a happy dance.

Edit: And to give some perspective on how silly difficult it was, @Ven called it witchcraft. lol

Edited January 13, 2016 by Randazzo

[Robotengineer]

Completing a realistic Space Shuttle like craft in RealismOverhaul and then successfully launching it to LEO and then gliding it back down to a runway (Brownsville or Cape Canaveral). 

[Red Shirt]

Hard to narrow it down. I start over with every new update. Maybe top 4: The first time I achieved an actual near circular orbit and then was able to reenter. Next my first Minmus landing. Seemed so hard, harder than Tylo seems now. First realizing that once you can get to Mun you can pretty much get anywhere - not that you can necessarily make orbit or get back, that's what rescue missions are for. Finally landing on Duna and watching as a dust storm rolled by from the visual mods installed. Felt real. 

[Mikki]

Landing and getting off from Tylo in Stock KSP, with a three Kerbal Commandpod, one seat was empty...
I have conquered the evil rock. I won. One does not simply do the JOOL-5 Challenge...  It is a battle!

[Dr.K Kerbal]

My most proudest moment was the first sucsessful docking and rendevous with Pt one of my space station. Screamed the whole house out!!!!! 

[nosirrbro]

My favorite moment... Well, one would be (version 0.20) my first orbit, I had a stayputnik strapped onto one of the long 1.25 meter LFO tanks with a swivel rocket, and 4 orange tanks each with mainsales. It took a lot of tries but I finally got it. Another would be my first space station/docking, the feeling of payoff after they fully attached what a amazing.

[Dr.K Kerbal]

22 hours ago, Evanitis said:

Best was undoubtably the first Mun-landing back in the day, only by trial and error.

 

But taking an overbuilt lander with 3.6k dV to orbit with the n-th iteration of a low-tech SSTO is a close second.

How on Kerbin did that even take off? 

[KerbonautInTraining]

I think that would go to my first ""truly Kerbal"" mission. 

I got a new PC for Xmas and my part count limit went from ~45 on the old one to ~120 while having reasonable framerates. Before, I always had to trim out everything that wasn't 100% necessary to the mission. Most of my missions were just a landing and brief EVA to plant a flag. (I don't play career yet)

This was a relatively simple direct ascent, 3 kerbal Mun landing. I was playing in Kscale2 which makes payload fractions a bit smaller. 

Anyway, I brought a rover and various KAS/KIS goodies to experiment with because I'd never taken the time to familiarize them. There was some other ...interesting... stuff that happened but I'll make a mission report that goes into more detail (screenshots), as well as show my later mission to Duna which I'm pretty proud of.

[Cornholio]

First time docking (and knowing that I could repeat it easily) was very exciting.

[JoeNapalm]

 

Late one night I hopped on, threw together an SSTO from scratch, launched it, deployed a mapping satellite in polar orbit, de-orbited and landed on the Space Center runway...

 

...when I realized that I'd eyeballed the entire design and had done the whole thing, from the ground up, on the first try. No test flights, no aborts, no reloads, everything just worked perfectly, I hadn't forgotten any parts, and nothing fell off.

 

(Can you believe the LUCK?! )

 

-Jn-

[Ehco Corrallo]

Landing on the Mun, definitely. 

I got a ship to Pol recently and decided that Pol is an excellent little moon, but nothing beats the triumph of a Mun landing. 

Another moment I'm particularly proud of was when I recovered the crew of a Munar science station in polar orbit, with a ship that was in equatorial orbit.   

[Xavven]

On 1/12/2016 at 3:48 PM, Tourist said:

Successfully planting a flag on Eve and escaping from the purple beast afterwards. 

I'd have to second that. Making Eve orbit from about 2000 meters starting altitude had me jumping and shouting in excitement around the house. I was so happy

[BLUESTREAK]

I bought the game as a distraction to take my mind off some personal life stuff. Thought it might distract me for a couple of hours.

Getting a successful sub orbital flight got a grin after several failed attempts. Getting orbital (and back!) elicted an involuntary "yes!". Landing on the mun was tough; figuring out docking got two fists in the air and a shout of triumph. Landing a rover on Duna was a solid achievement. Building a space station was tough.

This was 3 years ago. What I needed to take my mind off something for three hours has lasted about 8760 times longer than I needed. I come and go depending on how busy work is (I always return after a new version release, and still read devnotes every Wednesday morning) My style involves not killing kerbals and realism mods; I carefully, slowly advance - I've yet to walk on Duna - but after the Mun in my current save game, that's next!

 

still the best game ever

[Vermil]

My game is stock game only and don't get the Kerbals killed, which means extreme amounts of testing and preparations. I had to think a long time about the question. There's been three moments that have been jumping-around-in-the-room-like-an-idiot triumphs.

The second of them was my first manned landing on Duna. This happened before v1.0.

 

The third time was my first manned landing on Laythe. This happened in a v1.0 game.

 

When I started thinking about this, I wasn't sure the first time was more special. Because, really, when Kenbus Kerman first landed on Minmus, I wasn't jumping up and down like crazy. I was full of fear, because I wasn't sure he'd make it back. So the truth is I did the jumping up and down jubilant idiot when he had returned and landed safely on Kerbin. But still, yeah, the first time was the greatest moment. Unfortunately I don't have any screenshot of it. At that time I hadn't discovered <F1> yet. But that was the moment when KSP took on a new dimension for me.

The thing, regardless, that is my big kick in this game is really the manned landings. That's why I play this game.

 

 

 

[Norcalplanner]

KSP has provided a series of joyous, can't-wipe-the-grin-off-my-face moments. First launch. First leaving the atmosphere. First orbit. First successful recovery of a Kerbal who had been in orbit. First Mun landing. 

If I had to choose, though, it's a tie between two very similar events - getting back into orbit around Tylo after a manned landing as part of my first Jool 5 mission in 0.24; and getting a Kerbal back into orbit around Eve as part of my Eve Rocks mission in 0.25. Good times.

[pasukaru76]

When I was relatively new to the game: getting a probe into Duna orbit for the first time.

More recently: launching from Eve, and seeing the periapse rise above the atmosphere (with 77 m/s of delta-v to spare, even).

[Workable Goblin]

My greatest moment came a little while back, during an RP-0 career. I had been playing around with jets (I like airplanes), and designed one that handled just beautifully, so I decided to see how high I could get it (this is on Earth, not Kerbin, by the way). My first attempt, I managed to get up to 35,000 meters or so, but when I was descending the plane went into a spin (oddly like a number of actual attempts at altitude records), and I was unable to recover.

Fortunately, I had installed an escape system, so I was able to get the pilot back, but I wasn't about to leave it at that, so I tried again, this time after modifying the aircraft to incorporate anti-spin parachutes and looking up spin recovery procedures. I don't get quite as high, but I still enter a spin and I still can't recover; from outside, it was too hard to properly apply anti-spin techniques, and the parachutes didn't work, not well enough at least. Again, though, the pilot survives thanks to my ejection system.

At this point, I'm obviously determined, so I set out once again, this time with an RCS system so that the plane would handle better in the upper atmosphere. I managed to get even higher this time, a bit higher than the first time, but the RCS wasn't enough, so it went into a spin again. This time, though, I switched to IVA when I start to try to apply NASA PARE instead of trying to do it from the outside. Things are touch-and-go, but around 15,000 meters altitude--after falling 20,000 meters!--the aircraft stopped rotating and stabilized in a nose-down attitude. From there, I easily sped up, pulled into level flight, and returned to base. It took me three shots, but I did finally figure out how to handle that plane in that situation.

[PnDB]

My greatest moment thus far was back in 0.90 which took place almost one year ago today.  It was when a Kerbal first set foot on another celestial body (Minmus).  It was strange to get that strong a feeling of accomplishment... gave me goose bumps.  I sat there and stared for quite a while at this amazing world around Jeb.

(As you can see, I didn't know much about building short, wide landers at the time... that thing was hard to keep upright during touchdown).

The next great moment was when I returned to Minmus shortly thereafter for a second landing.

... and then snapped the following picture.  It really captured the awe of the moment, viewing Kerbol from another world.

And finally, my first multi-Kerbal landing... again, on Minmus.  Note the much shorter, wider lander.

 

[SpacedCowboy]

On 1/13/2016 at 11:55 PM, Gojira1000 said:

My very first Duna crewed mission and return was sweet, but I have to go with this. Because Eve is terrifying.

 

 

Excellent ! Loved the jams

[suicidejunkie]

It was the space cowboy days of the program, no fancy math beyond basic maneuver nodes and designs being first tested in the field.  It was the first use of Rockomax tanks to power heavy Minmus explorers, and mining tech was just being developed.

Valentina was in a standard Minmus hopper on the west side of the moon, training up a newbie pilot to two stars and waiting for a fuel delivery before finishing some lucrative survey contracts and eventually heading home.

Bill and Bob on the other hand, were flying the very latest in high tech; an unlimited range science explorer design with built in ISRU and drilling equipment, and they set it down on the slopes on the east side far from the training mission.

Hilarity struck when it turned out that the mining drills were taller than the landing legs, and Bill & Bob ended up riding a bucking ship slowly down the hill.

 

After a few minutes, the hilarity turned to tragedy when the drills had enough of being dragged sideways through the terrain at 0.6m/s.  The 6-way symmetry pods containing drills, auxiliary engines, fuel, ore, solar and most of the battery capacity decided to just fall off into a pile of debris.  This left the core stack of the ship standing naked on its poodle engine, held up at worrying angle by gyros as the remaining battery ticked rapidly downwards.

Rather than wait for the power to die and tip over to be stranded, Bill and Bob mustered their courage and lit the engine with what fuel they had, and burned east for orbit.  If only Jeb was there, he probably would have gone for less altitude and more actual orbit, but they had only gotten a path to the far side of Minmus when the fuel ran out.  Doom!

Val was quick to respond to the distress call, eyeballed the direction and launched to the west.  Pulling a 180 and burning even harder as Bill and Bob cruised past, she was able to dock during the descent and then used the last fumes of fuel to boost both ships into a safe orbit.

Seven days later, Jeb arrived from Kerbin to deliver much needed supplies, everyone made it home alive, and it was awesome.

[Stewcumber]

When I landed on the Mun for the first time. It was with a rocket that was only ever meant to get me to LKO. When I was in LKO with only my final 'lander' stage my mate said "when the Mun comes over the horizon, go full throttle". I made it to the Mun and then even landed on it, having never been to the Mun before. This was with no landing legs, lights, batteries, quicksaving...

 

 

[Hcube]

First docking ! I used to think that it would be impossible, but i made it ! This, and the space station i made after discovering that i was able to dock, were the best moments i had

[KerbonautInTraining]

Pinch me, I'm dreaming. I just built my first SSTO. First time flying it (other than a low alt takeoff/landing test) I got to orbit with 1900m/s left in the tanks. I've never even been that interested in SSTO's because I like to know beforehand my chances of success.

I'm very proud of the fact that it doesn't rely on remaining fuel for balance and doesn't go unstable at any point in the ascent. (I didn't base it off anyone else's design, sorry if it resembles something you built!)

E: I made some very precise, calculated modifications (slapped on more fuel tanks) so there's 3400m/s left in orbit. It can land on the Mun and return with 600m/s left. It does, however, get a bit unstable when the tanks are empty. As long as the AoA doesn't go above about 20° in the lower atmosphere it's fine. 

Edited February 1, 2016 by KerbonautInTraining