Do you ever chuckle at your old missions or concepts?

[DeltaDizzy]

My old ideas? Never, since all my ideas are perfect! Well one time I had to launch into space and return, and every time I tried, it blew up on landing.

[Superfluous J]

I was so proud of "Joolpollo," my crazily overengineered (yet sorely lacking) Jool 5 mission. Jool 6, actually, as it also got atmospheric science from Jool itself.

You only need watch the first few seconds to see the thing on the pad.

Anybody who dares watch the launch itself, note this was in ksp 0.23.5 where the atmosphere was a crazy placeholder approximation. My terribly inefficient launch was actually the most efficient way to do it back then.

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 7, 2018 by 5thHorseman

[Athen]

I wish I could remember missions I made WAY back in 2012ish when I first played. I don't remember anything other than being excited I made it out of the atmosphere once. At the time I figured it was because the demo was limited. I bought the game, played it for 10 minutes, then left it there for me to see sitting there and think, "hey, I should try to learn how to play that". Now, I'm addicted. 

If I could remember, I'm sure there would be plenty of ridiculous designs that I would get a kick out of.

[Ultimate Steve]

On 6/29/2018 at 5:49 AM, Atkara said:

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

 

Now that I look at that, that sort of looks like the Petersen mothership I designed a long time ago for IIRC my first manned expedition to Jool, Jool Expedition One for the lack of a better name. It was going to be followed by Jool Expedition Two, but the only thing I ever ended up designing and testing for that was a Laythe Boat that worked better as a submarine. Some of the ideas morphed into Project Intrepid, though.

I'll see if I can dig out the pictures sometime - remind me if I haven't for a few days!

 

[Delay]

2016(?): Okay, so I've landed on the Mun. Now how do I get back to Kerbin without running out of fuel before Mun orbit?
2017: Okay, I've landed on the surface of Ike. Now I just have to get back to Kerbin and the mission's done!

There definitely was an increase in confidence throughout just one year or so, and this year I landed on Duna for the first time and put probes around Jool. Now I'm playing with Principia and recently put my first craft around L₅ of the Mun/Kerbin system.
In 2016 I didn't even have the full version; that was still the .18.3 demo.

Good times.

Edited August 24, 2018 by Delay

[MythicalHeFF]

I remember my first few  attempts at a Mun landing, sometime in early 2016, using a terribly designed and over engineered rocket. My first attempt was a total failure, as I wasn’t paying attention and timewarped straight into the Mun and crashed. The second time I thought I could keep the navball in orbit mode and I could land just fine.

Nope. Ended with me crashing into the ground at about 70 m/s and tumbling for a while before the pod exploded because I hadn’t cancelled my horizontal velocity. Oof.

The third time I actually landed in one piece, but since I was on Steam, when I pressed shift+whateverbuttonitwas to take a screenshot, I throttled up and ended up destroying my engine on touchdown. In addition I had also used huge amounts of fuel trying to land because it was night and I didn’t know where the surface was. Wouldn’t have mattered anyways though because I didn’t put a heat shield on it and used the drogue chute for some reason even even through I already knew they were ineffective. 

P.S. Why does seemingly everyone I’ve seen start playing KSP (myself included) use only the top-mounted drogue chute? Why couldn’t anyone read the description, realize that was a stupid idea and replace it?! Honestly that thing could be removed from the game and no one would miss it. Also, people’s first few missions wouldn’t end in fiery death because the evil death trap known as the Mk.25 Drogue Chute had to exist. I despise that thing and have never used it at all since I was a total noob. 

 

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

I remember putting literally thousands of ECs of power storage on Mun landers. And a nuclear transfer stage built around a orange tank that somehow had barely enough DV for a Kerbin-Duna transfer.

And trying to take off from Kerbin with nuclear engines by attaching hundreds of them.

And many, many ideas that made perfect sense while half asleep, but I realized in the morning would involve connecting branches of the part tree together.

[Sharpy]

On 6/29/2018 at 9:55 AM, The Aziz said:

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. 

 

Spoiler

 

I built something around a similar concept; an entire "train" of MK3 segments, meant as a mission to Duna, along with a mining lander, ISRU and lab in orbit, a science lander, two fuel segments, return/reentry capsules segment etc. I assembled it in Minmus orbit, refueled from Minmus, and it was a thing of beauty. Took a month or so, the unmanned lander bringing the ore to orbit was a terrible idea with abysmal efficiency. (never mind it was meant to go between the science lander and the rest, as the science lander didn't have a port to dock). The idea was to get a gravity assist / Oberth maneuver against Kerbin going to Duna. TWR was poor but not hopeless. Delta-V - well, sufficient to get there, then I'd refuel from Ike.

Finally, transfer window came, and... I botched the transfer burn, missing Dune by a wide margin. Was unable to burn at full power as the whole thing nearly shook apart, entering wild vibrations when the engines worked. After that I think I abandoned KSP for a year or so.

[Ultimate Steve]

6 hours ago, Sharpy said:

I built something around a similar concept; an entire "train" of MK3 segments, meant as a mission to Duna, along with a mining lander, ISRU and lab in orbit, a science lander, two fuel segments, return/reentry capsules segment etc. I assembled it in Minmus orbit, refueled from Minmus, and it was a thing of beauty. Took a month or so, the unmanned lander bringing the ore to orbit was a terrible idea with abysmal efficiency. (never mind it was meant to go between the science lander and the rest, as the science lander didn't have a port to dock). The idea was to get a gravity assist / Oberth maneuver against Kerbin going to Duna. TWR was poor but not hopeless. Delta-V - well, sufficient to get there, then I'd refuel from Ike.

Finally, transfer window came, and... I botched the transfer burn, missing Dune by a wide margin. Was unable to burn at full power as the whole thing nearly shook apart, entering wild vibrations when the engines worked. After that I think I abandoned KSP for a year or so.

That sort of reminds me of the first time I sketched out a Duna mission, let's see if I can dig out the notebook... Took me half an hour, now I can finish typing this sentence!

It is a picture, pencil drawn, of an insanely long mothership. It appears to be 2.5m in diameter because this was before 3.75m parts and back when nuclear engines also used oxidizer. The front module is an RCS tug, and then there is a stockpile module of 3 large monopropellant containers, then a nuclear drive stage with ONLY 2 nuclear engines and only 2 orange tanks. Then there is a giant crew section with a lander can and at least 3 hitchhikers and 2 cupolas. Then there is a science section with a science lab and a few experiments. And then there is what looks like a 3 hitchhiker return vehicle covered in parachutes (this was before heat was a thing), a 3 hitchhiker base module, a rover, a plane, and an adapter with 3 separate Duna landers on it.

All of this would have supposedly gotten to Duna and back with just 2 orange tanks.

I also found two other early Duna proposals - One, titled "Duna Mission" was probably designed to be fictional, but it was a massive rocket which contained several mk3 and 2.5m base modules in its interstage, probably totalling the length of 5 or 6 large mk3 segments. With a tiny ascent vehicle. And what appear to be 7.5m and 10m parts.

The other one was Operation: Amulet. This one appeared to be a lander with a 2.5m command pod, a science lab, and the smallest 2.5m tank surrounded by two stacks of an FL-T800, an FL-T400, an LV-T30 or 45, and parachutes/legs. It was connected to a habitation module and nuclear tug for use on orbit and a weird box thing which might have been an ISRU on the front.

@Atkara

So here is your ship:

 

And here is mine, the KSS Petersen/Peterson:

The resemblance is there, is it not? I'm pretty sure this was my first manned Jool Expedition.

Spoiler

So here we have:

The Tylo Rover!

The Jool Entry Probe!

The Laythe Exploration Plane!

The Vall Lander!

5-Moon Scansat!

The Laythe SSTO!

The Light Moon Lander!

The Moon Transfer Ship!

And the Tylo Lander!

 

Okay, so more about the mission, the Petersen carried all of the crew to Jool and parked in a high orbit around Vall. The transfer ship took them to Laythe, where all three things were landed, the plane, the SSTO, and the rover.

And that was probably my first Laythe landing! The plane went on a mission or two before nearly running out of fuel and returning to base. The rover had little Puff engines (that's what they looked like back then) and landed using them and parachutes. And the SSTO is what it says it is.

That is the coolest thing I found, those three tiny islands.

I then took back off with the crew of 5 or 6 I think and went to the outer moons.

And to finish things off, I went to Tylo.

Unfortunately, it was discovered that the Vall lander did not have enough fuel to land on Vall and take off again, and the mothership did not have enough fuel to get home, so I piled everyone into the transfer ship, edited off some of the empty tanks (hey, they'd be able to do it IRL I think) and went home.

Also the transfer ship was called Tootsie Roll.

I brought the crew back with an SSTO but I think I had to cheat to get the SSTO to work, unfortunately. Those old days were full of minor cheating and persistent editing because I didn't have HyperEdit. I'm much better about it now, or maybe it's because I can design things better.

Also this was in 1.0.5. Took me long enough, I started playing in 0.19!

Lastly, a picture of the flotilla:

In my physical KSP manilla folder I found two sheets of paper with plans for Jool Expedition II. One of them is a list of stuff, I'll transcribe it here.

 

Jool Expedition II

 

Jool:

• Robotic Ascent Vehicle - Maybe
• Tootsieroll II
• CRV-Alpha
• Jool Polar Scansat

Laythe:

• Laythe Station
• Refueling base
  • Brittania Alpha - Mine
  • Brittania Beta - hab
  • Brittania Gamma - Sci
• Dragon Rider SSTO
• Longer range plane
• Boat
• Submarine

Vall:

• Minibase with bike
• Lander

Tylo:

• Minibase
• ISRU
• Lander (re-usable) }combine ISRU and lander (LOL past me, not going to happen)

Bop/Pol:

• Bike/High Delta-V Scooters
• Century Eagle - Ore hauler }combine Bike and Century Eagle

20 ships? 15's my limit.

Goals:

• Infrastructure for future missions
• Laythe Base

 

So, that's fairly ambitious! The second piece of paper is a table with the landing site and a likelyhood of being accepted.

• Laythe Refueling Base - 100%
• Pol to Vall Refueler - 100%
• Reusable Tylo Lander - 70%
• Laythe Space Station - 70%
• Tylo Space Station - 50%
• Space Tug Tootsie Roll II - 100%
• CRV - 100%
• Longer range Laythe plane - 70%
• Vall lander - 90%
• A better Laythe SSTO - 40%
• Mini Laythe SSTO - 60%
• Space Bike - 80%
• Bop Station - 40%
• Pol Station - 40%
• Bop/Pol lander - Blank.

 

 

Some notes, this mission never happened but I was testing stuff for it. The robotic ascent vehicle was cancelled but I'm currently sending a manned Jool Ascent Vehicle (ambitious) to Jool for Project Intrepid. The Laythe boat was built and extensively tested, but in the end worked better as a submarine. I did some tests with a reusable Tylo lander with ISRU but it didn't work. I also built the Century Eagle (play on Millennium Falcon), an ore hauler from Pol to Vall, but I don't think the Delta-V ever worked out, although I don't think I had KER in those days.

Everything else never materialized, but these concepts did influence some other things that actually flew. For instance I did build a very tiny Laythe fleet (pathetic) for Project Intrepid which just now made it to Laythe. I need to send better stuff. It did include an unmanned submarine. I built a "bike" (High delta-v small transfer ship) but I sent it to Dres instead of Jool. And although the Century Eagle never made it into operation, it influenced the ITV-022 "Ice Cream," a ship in Project Intrepid which is bringing a space station to Jool.

Sorry for all of the Project Intrepid advertising, it's really the only save I do any actual gameplay in anymore. I want to make a decent career or sandbox in which I go to Laythe a lot but I'm lacking free time and motivation.

 

 

 

[Atkara]

58 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

The resemblance is there, is it not? I'm pretty sure this was my first manned Jool Expedition.

Indeed it's there. Like yours, my ship's design principles were formulated back in 1.05. Over time, it visited anything it's lander section could touch down and takeoff from.

1 hour ago, Ultimate Steve said:

I want to make a decent career or sandbox in which I go to Laythe a lot but I'm lacking free time and motivation.

Long term projects can do that. I'm also at that point of having lost a lot of my initial momentum and the 13MB save doesn't make things easier. So I take it easy till I get back to it.

[Cavscout74]

My first "long-range" exploration vehicle was, well, bad.  It took some digging through the dusty realms of my hard drive, but I did save some images from back then. Assembled by hand in orbit, the main engines weren't quite straight due to the way I designed it, so it had a rather pronounced roll when it was thrusting.  For the design, I had a core section with command section (Mk 2 nose actually), lab, batteries, etc.  Then I docked 2 fuel arms coming out left & right - this was my crucial error, I eyeballed docking them as straight as possible, but was a few degrees off.   I also ended up towing a lander because the docking ports I placed on the aft side of the engine arms had nowhere near enough room for any kind of lander.

Refueling at Minmus, because otherwise it wouldn't have enough fuel to get to Duna & come home

I surprisingly made it to Duna.  IIRC, Duna & back was about the limit of range.  And with 4 small solar panels, it was probably about the limit of useful power production.  It did have an RTG too, but it wasn't going to operating the lab in Jool orbit even if it could've made it there.  It did account for my first successful Duna landing though.

Heading back home in all it's twisted glory:

On the other hand, my first spaceplane (at least the first one that made it off the runway intact) actually did what you'd expect of a first spaceplane - it made orbit, but had no cargo or passenger space, & pretty  much just enough fuel to return to landing.   Which I actually managed to do without crashing.  Too much.

 

 

Edited August 27, 2018 by Cavscout74

[SiriusRocketry]

On 6/29/2018 at 7:55 PM, The Aziz said:

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. 

@The Aziz How can that only have >1000 DV? My much smaller two-orange tank single stack model has 4.5k!

Edited August 30, 2018 by SiriusRocketry

[Piatzin]

When I first started out and had zero grasp of orbital mechanics, I decided to make a rocket, load it with SRB's, and point it in the general direction of the Mun

I guesstimated the trajectory, and, surprisingly, achieved an encounter, but by that point I had wasted all my fuel and as I was sitting there I absently thought, 'Oh.......I do need to slow down, right....? Oh....OHH.....'

[jackdown]

I still missing my old landing platform.

 

Edited September 2, 2018 by jackdown
my stupidity ;)

[moogoob]

Digging up old screenshots we find amusing?

Back when Nukes used LF & O and fairings weren't yet a thing this guy, the SpaceM Interstellotron, powered all my early interplanetary flights. It had WAY too much delta-v because I didn't trust my flying skills. Served me well, but in the era of post 1.0 aero and fairings it's a nightmare to get to orbit.

This tiny shuttle amused me. What amused me more is that I actually managed to fly a proper mission with the thing, launch, orbit, docking with a space station, re-entry and landing at KSP's ruway intact. Not to brag or anything.

Oh, and the time I flew a Nastybird to Duna for no reason other than to see if it could be done, stranding Val and Bob until I deleted their save.

EDIT: OK, one more: I designed this for a Stock VTOL challenge I posted in the challenges section. Thing went through iterations where each one was just me shoving more intakes where ever I could until I could ensure the engine always had full airflow no matter what direction or speed it was traveling. The parachutes are there for a reason.

Edited September 3, 2018 by moogoob

[W. Kerman]

Concepts that seemed sound at the time?

How about “I’m going to install not only every single mod in USI, but also 20 other mods, and it’s going to work wonderfully!”

 

Screen shot unavailable, mostly because the game detonated on startup.

[Kerbinchaser]

My first Mün mission brought a giggle. I had to balance the lander on one of it's solar panels 'cause I ran out of fuel at 50 M and 'landed' in a crater. Needless to say I was pretty hyped. I recorded the whole thing but have currently lost it. That was 3 years ago.

Now going to the Mün is a daily job, bringing ore from surface bases to orbital stations, therefore fueling the Kerbal economy. 

 

1 hour ago, W. Kerman said:

Concepts that seemed sound at the time?

How about “I’m going to install not only every single mod in USI, but also 20 other mods, and it’s going to work wonderfully!”

 

Screen shot unavailable, mostly because the game detonated on startup.

Out of likes. I like this.

Edited September 3, 2018 by Lo Var Lachland

[Ultimate Steve]

8 minutes ago, Lo Var Lachland said:

My first Mün mission brought a giggle. I had to balance the lander on one of it's solar panels 'cause I ran out of fuel at 50 M and 'landed' in a crater. Needless to say I was pretty hyped. I recorded the whole thing but have currently lost it. That was 3 years ago.

 

 

That reminds me of my first manned Minmus landing - I got out, tripped, and upon standing up almost knocked my horribly overbuilt lander over!

[Kerbinchaser]

1 minute ago, Ultimate Steve said:

That reminds me of my first manned Minmus landing - I got out, tripped, and upon standing up almost knocked my horribly overbuilt lander over!

Heheh. 

[HansonKerman]

Yeah, Minmus grav is light!!

[moogoob]

20 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

That reminds me of my first manned Minmus landing - I got out, tripped, and upon standing up almost knocked my horribly overbuilt lander over!

Reminded me of this UNDER-engineered lander that I sent to Minmus:

And I did it again on Gilly:

Hey, I was in the area, spent a lot for the engine and probably needed the "landed on Gilly" science to unlock some node or another.

Edited September 4, 2018 by moogoob

[JerseyChris]

My first space station was hilarious.  In a horrible orbit 100x400km, parts stuck on every which way willy nilly and way too many docking ports if you could get to them through the forest of solar panels and engines and whatnot poking out.  It looked like an angry porcupine.

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

One of the craft I laugh at the most is my Flying Pancake.

I mean... why?

 

[moogoob]

18 hours ago, EpicSpaceTroll139 said:

One of the craft I laugh at the most is my Flying Pancake.

I mean... why?

 

How... how well does it fly?

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

3 hours ago, moogoob said:

How... how well does it fly?

It flew kind of like a cardboard box. In other words, it was pretty draggy, hence the 8 afterburning panthers. It turns out fairings don't make great wings.