Do you ever chuckle at your old missions or concepts?

[Ultimate Steve]

Exactly as the title asks.

I was looking through an old notebook today from several years ago and saw a drawing of a spaceship that could take either 256 or 512 Kerbals to anywhere but Moho. Along with it was a note that said something like "Probably will never be built due to lag concerns and difficulty flying it."

2014 me: Nah that's hard (512 Kerbals)

2016 me: Hold my beer (916 Kerbals)

 

Edited June 29, 2018 by Ultimate Steve

[Lisias]

Define "old".  

Right now, I chuckle and mock myself for missions I did yesterday…  

[Superfluous J]

This is one of the oldest images I have on imgur:

It was designed to send 5 self-landing rovers to Mun, in mid 2013. No clue the version. 0.21?

I wonder what it'd be like to recreate it and check its performance in KER these days

Edited June 29, 2018 by 5thHorseman

[ARS]

Back then I'm imagining the moon battle from Gundam SEED

[Bill Phil]

I do chuckle at my first mission that made orbit. Solar orbit, that is. Skipped kerbin orbit entirely. No images... we're talking 2012 or so.

I also get a good laugh at my first Mun landing... straight down for... what - 50 kilometers? 

[Superfluous J]

42 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

I also get a good laugh at my first Mun landing... straight down for... what - 50 kilometers? 

Oh jeez I just remembered reading someone who posted "I just burn straight up to 70km and then burn sideways" and it was like a light went off. I probably launched like that for a week before I actually checked how much fuel it used.

[Bill Phil]

5 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

Oh jeez I just remembered reading someone who posted "I just burn straight up to 70km and then burn sideways" and it was like a light went off. I probably launched like that for a week before I actually checked how much fuel it used.

That one too.

It does work though... and sometimes efficiency isn't necessary...

1 hour ago, ARS said:

Back then I'm imagining the moon battle from Gundam SEED

Blasphemy!

The only Gundam is UC Gundam!

Of course I'm joking. I do prefer UC though.

Great job, though.

Edited June 29, 2018 by Bill Phil

[The Aziz]

Well I once designed and assembled (in orbit, of course) huge interplanetary nuclear mothership (300+ parts, my computer could barely handle it) with intention for a grand tour.

When I got my hands on Delta-v readings, though... Less than a thousand with TWR less than 0.3. 

Edited June 29, 2018 by The Aziz
pic addition

[Atkara]

Ran out of fuel on the way back from Bop, while piloting an early version of this, back in 1.0 IIRC:

Nothing wrong with the design, just my state of ignorance back then. No knowledge of gravity assists, eyeballing transfer windows, what can go wrong, right?

My first attempts to reach the Mun were also laughable. I just couldn't get it. Then, in a fit of frustration, I set straight for the target marker. Somehow I got a fly-by... before getting out of Kerbin's SOI. I remember laughing and thinking "this is definitely not the way to do it"

Ah, good times

 

[Ultimate Steve]

To add to everyone's Mun stories, I had the opposite problem. I completely overbuilt my lander, even with my inefficient landing profile. And it also took 8 mystery goos. The last stage was an FL-T100 with a spark, then an FL-T400 and an LV-909, and four or six of those (with some twitches) placed symmetrically around the core.

That's just what landed, the transfer stage and lifter was something different. I still had half of the core and the entire upper stage when I landed back on Kerbin.

[JoeNapalm]

 

You mean like the single-launch space station project, code name HAPPY EASTER?:

 

No, never.

 

-Jn-

[Superfluous J]

9 minutes ago, JoeNapalm said:

HAPPY EASTER

Ahhhh remember all those arguments against Procedural Fairings, saying they were so cheaty because you could launch stuff like that if you wanted. Ignoring that the stuff would launch WITHOUT it just as well?

[JoeNapalm]

 

Speaking of bad ideas:

 

I've had a few...

 

-Jn-

[FleshJeb]

14 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

I do chuckle at my first mission that made orbit. Solar orbit, that is. Skipped kerbin orbit entirely. No images... we're talking 2012 or so.

I also get a good laugh at my first Mun landing... straight down for... what - 50 kilometers? 

To get to the Mun, I used to just transfer until the Apo was at Mun height, and then timewarp through several orbits until the Mun SOI hit the ship. THEN I'd do the multi-hundred km vertical landing. Yeesh.

[katateochi]

I look at some of my early youtubes and my ascent profiles make me shudder, not just inefficient, just darn stupid; like, what gravity turn. And then there's my early Mun landings where I landed by killing all horizontal speed at 40-50km up and dropped straight down....what a noob!
....oh I just read some of the other posts, at least I'm in good company; the 50k drop club!

[SiriusRocketry]

I see that many of you have earned your way into the 50k drop club... My first Mün landing was the exact opposite. I cancelled most of my vertical velocity, only to remember my horizontal velocity a few seconds from touchdown. I hit the ground, still doing 60 m/s, and destroyed everything other than the command pod, with Valentina in it.

My next Mün lander epic rescue mission was done correctly, with Val hopping into Jeb and Bob's lander and returning home.

[RealKerbal3x]

I remember on my first Minmus landing I killed most of my horizontal velocity and just dropped 30 km down to a landing.

Nice smooth landing it was though. Less than 1 m/s

[MR L A]

On 6/29/2018 at 8:55 AM, The Aziz said:

When I got my hands on Delta-v readings, though... Less than a thousand with TWR less than 0.3.

You sure that's not an in atmosphere dV?

[TheSaint]

I kinda miss those days, actually....

This was about 3-1/2 years ago.

[avengerki]

I remember the second day I had KSP back in 2012 I decided I wanted to go to the Mun. Launched off kerbin, circularized the orbit, aimed at the mun and started accelerating when I got the intercept of the Mun(straight into it). Decided it was taking to long to get there and I think I timewarped with the plan to adjust and get an orbit closer to the mun. I was a little late on returning to normal time but I hadnt hit the mun yet. I pulled out of the time warp with like a 790m/s speed 10000m above the surface heading straight for the surface. Then Poof, no more ship.

Next attempt was a little more sane, setup the trajectory so that I would at least do a fly by. When I got closer to the mun started to deorbit and by the time I got close to the surface I was only going 100m/s with about 10m left to land. I think I panicked and eva'd at that point and somehow after all of the explosions there was jebediah standing on the moon after he bounced a few times. No ship left though.

The rescue mission had the same basic flight profile, but I was in a hurry so kept accelerating and used up all my fuel before I could slow down. Shot passed the mun at somewhere around 2000m/s, escaped kerbin soi and then escaped from solar soi and was just flying into deep space.

After that I tweaked the modded engine I had made to not be so powerful...

[purpleivan]

One of my early Eve return designs.

It was far too tall and narrow based to make landings reliably and didn't have enough DV to make it back to orbit.

 

But at least the detaching the long descent ladders prior to launch was kind of cool.

Fortunately I flew it unmanned, so an Eve rescue mission wasn't called for.

 

Edited July 4, 2018 by purpleivan

[MDZhB]

15 hours ago, TheSaint said:

My missions still look like this, and I have 120% atmospheric heating.

[Randox]

A long time ago I used to mount some of my fuel radially to reduce the length of my rockets, because the old aero model was stupid and bendy rockets are hard to fly. Some designs used the radial fuel tanks as mounting points for struts to add additional rigidity.

And who can forget the tilt rotor quad copter from my brief foray into VTOL aircraft. I kept this version of the game along with the mods I'm using here. The engines rotate 90 degrees. Level flight requires around a 30 degree pitch from the engines unloaded.

Grappling from the air is incredibly difficult and tedious, and only works with the electromagnet winch, which requires more power than I can supply, limiting how long loads can be carried (guess how I found that out). Standard procedure is to land next to the payload and attach a suchtion cup manually. The point where the winch goes tight is...exciting. So is landing with a heavy payload.

I miss having this thing in my normal space program though. It's incredibly manoeuvrable and fun to fly.

[blimpsnack]

once i thought that a parachute would work on the mun

[bigcalm]

> Do you ever chuckle at your old missions or concepts?

Oh god yes.

I was hugely proud of my "Mk3 Lander".  I'd uploaded pics and even the craft file to Dropbox.

And, looking back with what I know now, it is utter garbage.  At least one flip on the way to space was inevitable.  It was hugely overpowered in the first stage, ok on the second, appallingly during the third where I'd be trying to reach orbit.  The rest of the stages were there to land on the Mun, which it did reasonably well, but it was way too tall and there was always the danger of toppling when landing on the Mun.

Nevertheless, you know what, I'm still proud of it.  It was my first truly successful Mun Lander that worked relatively reliably.