Your most successful mission

[LongLance]

I would like to know about your most successful missions. I would say mine was my second mun mission. In the first one, the lander tipped over, and when I tried to escape by thrusting... well, yeah. The second time it landed upright soo... YAY! My next Mun mission, I want to actually go there and BACK, not there and boom.

[Francois424]

My first Jool-5 back in 0.90 (or was it 0.25 ?).

Although my mothership was modded (end-game engines using 4 Super Ions of 250Kn/ea), everyone of my landers used stock parts/fuel, which meant bring a huge white tank of LFO to the mission.
Crashed a few times learning how-to's on Tylo and trying to land on Land on Laythe as my "Laythe Ascender" did very poorly on water (Ironic, I know).

That was fun, and I'll need to do this again in 1.1 (stock if good performances and no need to reduce part count)

[SurrealShock]

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Edited April 25 by SurrealShock

[AbacusWizard]

A few versions ago I put together a colony on Laythe: a surface outpost with a dockable rover, an orbital station with plenty of fuel, and a spaceplane to travel between the two.

[LongLance]

Today i made my new biggest accopmlishment: I went to the moon AND BACK with my own design! (well, it wasn't all mine. I copied some of an S5 mun rocket I downloaded. BUT STILL, THERE AND BACK)

[Dfthu]

I guess my most successful mission was returning form duna all in one ship.

[legoclone09]

I have two, one was done last night in my highly modded 64k/Harder Solar System install. I sent an orbiter with a lander attached and the lander landed and orbiter orbited. I'm going to send probes to all bodies in the system and set up a massive satellite system. The other mission was a while ago and was a manned mission to Vall and back using a premade ship, the Kassandra by @H2O..

[Aladran]

My Grand Tour, where on the same mission I visited every body of Kerbol`s system with 1 ship 1 lander and 7 probes.

 

Stock + MJ

 

Logbook: (In french)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lM_h0191rQEmh64iJFZz241bZJady4u1ykbuChBxGKc/edit?usp=sharing

Edited February 16, 2016 by Aladran

[PhylumCnidaria]

My most successful mission was with my ISRU SSTO. I actually landed on a hill and tipped, but thanks to landing gear wizardry, I got back upright.

Unfortunately for that, when I went into orbit it was too low and I crashed into a mountain.

[Evanitis]

I can't tell. 'Most successful' is so hard to pick. Some really ambitious projects can go without considerable hitches, while simple textbook missions can go so horribly wrong - especially when one doesn't pay attention as it's routine. I usually feel the most accomplished when something succeeds not because of careful consideration, but against all odds. So I'll pick random designs that somehow worked.

I found a picture of my first, modular scanner-lander-miner-refiner rig I sent to Jool in my very first career game. The beauty of it is that none of it's parts were designed for that task, I just noticed a close transfer window and threw it together from pieces I had laying around in Kerbin SoI.

It worked as bad as it looks. But hey, I planted a flag on four moons, and landed some debris on the fifth.

[Tortfeasor]

I've had missions that went farther, did more science, and both at once.  But I'm most proud of my first Mun rover mission in my last career.  I finally got a rover that worked, hit three biomes on that mission, and everything else from launch to rendezvous to landing back on Kerbin just went perfectly.  I stopped playing KSP for about a week afterwards because I just couldn't bear a mission that didn't go as well.

 

[Terwin]

Probably my outer planets grand tour.

Admittedly I used a VASMIR engine from the Near Future mod, refueled with ISRU, but I landed on every body on rails outside of Kerbin orbit except for: Jool, Tylo, Lathe.

(I am currently working on doing the set-up for something similar using stock engines(with tweak-scale for part-count management), and Life Support.  I have already started launching scansats and intend to send out fuel depots with Life support supply stashes shortly)

[Jhawk1099]

Probably my Duna mission. I managed to get Bill, Jeb, and Bob to and from Duna while landing a probe on Ike at the same time.

[KerbonautInTraining]

My "Ares" Duna missions in Kscale2 (2x bigger solar system) with KIS/KAS and TAC life support.

I really need to make a mission report but basically the lander + transfer stage are launched first, unmanned. The command module is essentially a small space station with a single LV-N. The CM docks with the lander and an EVA adds KAS struts to stiffen things up a bit. The transfer stage sends the stack to duna. 

Capturing at duna takes nearly 18 minutes of burning (spread over 2 orbits) accelerating at 0.8m/s^2. For heavier lander variants the stack can aerobrake using the lander's heat shield. 

After that it goes pretty much as you'd expect. The lander has a dedicated descent stage which is tied to the surface with KAS pylons. I love the Apollo-look of the landing site after departing. There's an ascent stage with 2 terriers and an OMS stage with RCS and 2 monoprop thrusters.

[Invader Jim]

It is probably not my best ever but last weekend I built a satellite that completed two Minmus satellite contracts and is now still in orbit and is half of the station I am going to create for the third Minmus contract which is to build a station in orbit around Minmus.  Some people won't use a single satellite for more than one contract (they think it is cheating) but I don't play that way.  Oh, I also transmitted science while in space with that satellite and that satisfied another contract. 

[Frank_G]

My mission to Eve was my most dangerous mission. The mission to Jool was much cooler, but  the lander failed at Tylo, so the Eve return mission is still my most successful mission.

 

The album is viewed best directly on Imgur...

Edited February 22, 2016 by Frank_G
Added note

[Tourist]

Kerballed Eve landing and return back to Kerbin. I was so happy when the fuel ran out on the final stage and lo and behold it my PE was (just) above the atmosphere. What's more it was a very inefficient ascent (I veered off my ascent profile while switching to map view and keeping an eye on my heat) so it was absolutely repeatable. All that was left to do was pick up the kerbal in the mothership and tow command pod back to Kerbin. It was very satisfying. 

Although a close second goes to attaching a sciencebay to my base on Minmus. I've since seen people on youtube use wheels and landing legs to move components into place to dock with components on the ground. This appears to be the efficient, much easier method. However, they don't call me "The Hard Way" Tourist for nothing (or, well, at all really). Using a skycrane with four nukes, and a lot of RCS, and extreme abuse of quickload, I eventually managed to dock the components together via hovering the the component into position. It was not easy, involving hands flying back and fourth on the keyboard, adjusting throttle, using the translation keys, correcting tilts that occured because of use of translation controls when the RCS not being perfectly aligned. Sheesh... it was difficult.        

[AlextheBodacious]

It was just me and debug menu, Kerbal X and the solar system... where didn't I go?

Also, that one time with the Orion mod. I got 2120Gm out.

And that time on a Mac Pro. It was so unbelievably fast. Mun and back? 3. Minutes.

Come to think of it, I actually am a very successful rocket builder. I usually make lots of failed savegames and a couple good ones. I had an excellent one, but didn't know about platform differentials. It was horribly corrupted.

[soulsource]

For me it was my only successful Eve return up to now, in 0.23.5. But my first crewed Moho mission an the Jool-4 in 0.90 come pretty close. Ah, an then there was also the first time I managed to land a probe using a self-written kOS script.

[Guz]

 

[Triop]

I flew under the brigdge but it went to fast to press F1 for a screenshot

[LongLance]

I'm surprised by how much people have noticed this topic.

[Zer0Winds]

Three words: Second Mun Landing

It was successful. And now those Kerbals are forced to wait for 9 years before I decide to bring them back... Wait... OH GOD! I FORGOT TO BRING THEM BACK!

[Vermil]

I'm unsure about what to consider most successful...
My entire playing style is that I prepare very meticulously, leaving almost nothing to chance and then only to very good odds. That's how I enjoy the game.

So it's almost more relevant to talk about my failures. My first (unmanned of course) landing on Duna is one. Boy, did I miss that one! Wreckage bouncing about over square miles. But in a way even that was a success, because it was a fact finding mission, to see what was to expect on Duna. And I duly noted: No braking help from the atmosphere.

Then there was my first attempt to have a rocket return from a Laythe landing. Unmanned again of course. I was pretty sure of that one, because in tests the rocket could even achieve orbit on Kerbin.  Problem was that those tests were made with an early version. Then there is this thing called mission creep... But again I learned something. That those few extra things, and those,.. could easily add up if you don't pay attention.

The two most dangerous and uncertain things I've pulled off - if those can count as big successes - is my first manned Minmus mission (done without a clue, SAS or navigation node). And my first manned Laythe mission, which was rather eventful and precarious at times. Laythe is also the biggest challenge I've overcome sofar. Eve will be worse, much worse, probably.

 

 

[moogoob]

A career probe mission to the outer moons of Jool. Did it twice actually, and the second time was even better. Took a single lander to both Pol and Bop, in that order. As in, landed on Pol, did science, took off and docked with its mothership, flew to Bop and did the same. Hit "Explore" contracts for Jool, Pol and Bop.

The second time? Nailed a Tylo transfer.